Joan Troy, who tangled with state wildlife commissioners when she was a state employee, lost her job last week due to budget cuts.
Troy, who worked 16 years for the state, including nine for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, said she saw her RIF coming, because she had been marginalized at the office since the wildlife commissioners tried to fire her two years ago.
"They wanted to bury me and make sure I had no contact with anyone," Troy said from her Raleigh home. "I was actually the only employee banned from attending commission meetings. I was expecting the RIF."
Gordon Myers, the commission's executive director, said there was no plan to oust Troy - that her's was one of 7.5 filled jobs the office had to eliminate because of a $4 million budget cut. In addition, 15 vacant positions were eliminated, he said. Division directors at the agency made the decisions, Myers said, and commissioners had no say in them.
In 2007, Troy's conflicts with commission members lead to the forced resignation of her boss, former executive director Dick Hamilton.
Troy, whose job it was to propose and help implement the agency's rules, disagreed with commissioners on whether to ban boating within 100 feet of dams at nine lakes in the western part of the state.
Commissioners failed in their attempts to fire her in 2007. Troy returned to the commission office, but she said her job description was rewritten.
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Re: Not fired, but laid off
Joan Troy was one of the Wildlife Commission's most dedicated and effective employees. She served two previous executive directors well. But her conscientiousness likely cost her job. She crossed swords with a commissioner from Gaston County, pointing out he had a conflict of interest in trying to represent the Commission and NC sportsmen with Duke Energy. Within four days, then chairman (Wes Seegars) insisted Hamilton fire her. Hamilton would not (against NC state law and he liked her work) and so Hamilton was forced to resign. When Troy was Legislative Liaison, she often prevented problems that would have hurt the WRC's relationship with the NC legislature. She could have prevented delayed implementation of wildlife law changes this year. However, because the WRC chairman, through the exec director, prevented her from attending WRC meetings, she was not allowed input that could have put those laws to go into affect. The WRC hired someone else to do her liaison job, wastefully paying two people to do a job Troy could handle. Honest to a fault but unafraid to point out problems, she was RIFed for doing her job. And that's the way it is in Bev Perdue's "open" state government for anyone who steps on toes.